Happy Baby Let-downs

Starting my 12th year on this blog, it's time to talk about stuff I think is worth doing when I'm too injured to run (which is often). I'm going to do a series of posts of exercises that focus mostly on muscles that attach to the hip - and there are a lot of them. Almost all of them will be moving from one standard yoga pose to another; it's the movement between them that's important.

Start from the "happy baby" pose, which is one of the less flattering ones.

From this, alternately lower one leg to the floor and then the other. If you're extremely flexible in the hamstrings (and few runners are), this puts you into the "reclining head to big toe pose."

The "half happy baby" is more likely.

Yoga instructors would have you keep the knee unbent and use a strap to reach your toes - and that is a more thorough hamstring stretch - but I'm using this differently. Dropping one leg at a time gives you a gentle stretch of the hamstring (if you're tight enough) and works the core at the same time. Do the motion slowly, three times on each side.